Toxic Leadership: The corporate insurgency.

I spent 15 years of my life fighting an insurgency throughout the middle east. It’s because of that experience I am able to identify what one looks like and the damage it has.

An insurgency means to undermine the common good. It does this through fear, intimidation, propaganda, and misapplied authority. Insurgents scare those who would have things be better into submission, thereby halting progress and prosperity for the group. An insurgency is only concerned for it’s well being and it’s agenda. They are masters at recruiting others through propaganda and false narratives. Insurgents can come in and destroy years of progress in just a few weeks! They turn everyone against one another, creating a power vacuum that they quickly and intentionally fill.

I’ve witnessed this first hand, more times than I’d like to admit, I’ve seen in with Jaysh Al Mahdi Militia, Mujahideen, Fedayeen, and ISIS. They all have a different name but share a similar goal. To destroy progress and steal passion.

In the corporate world there is an insurgency happening. It’s happening every day in every company and it’s name is Toxic Leadership. It operates the same as any other insurgency. It starts by planting the seeds of discontent between “Corporate” and the hourly and salary employees. It uses everything the company tries to do in order to make the lives of their employees better against them by painting it in a negative light. Toxic leaders will use anything from a new process intended to streamline the workload, to even bonuses, citing they are not enough. They recruit others to join them in their general disdain for “corporate” and even set up their own training camps, indoctrinating new employees to inculcate their way of thinking. These toxic leaders will steal people, potential, and profits by stifling growth and initiative from those they effect.

So what’s the good news? Like any insurgency there is a cure. Find it and eradicate it with a superior force! Empower the REAL leaders with critical leadership and resiliency skills. Facilitate the growth and direction of those solid leaders to get in the trenches and fight and WIN! Hold those toxic leaders accountable and show them a better way. Don’t keep them as enemies, rather turn them into new allies.

It all boils down to skill set. Sure some people are born with leadership qualities, but real leadership takes skill and skills take practice to get good at. Leadership can’t be taught in a two hour block during a three week management course. It has to be groomed, cultivated, and quantified to be effective,